Neighbors in the community of Far Rockaway, New York, met with New York City Council member James J. Sanders (D-Queens) and Nassau Legis. Jeff Toback (D-Oceanside) to protest a tittilating strip club billboard sign.

According to Newsday, the area where the Platinum Club’s “Gentleman’s Club” billboard, which features a large breasted woman wearing skimpy leather straps, is primarily Orthodox Jews, who find the billboard to be “offensive” and “open pornography”.

Lawrence Village trustee Michael Fragin said the club had the “right to advertise” in a manner that “wasn’t offensive” while Toback and Sanders said they were going to “reach out” to the Platinum Club’s management before filing a lawsuit.

Far Rockaway is located in the New York City borough of Queens on the Rockaway Peninsula. One of four neighborhoods, Far Rockaway located on the easternmost section of the Rockaways, the “most distant” New York neighborhood from Manhattan.

Described as an “inner-city, oceanfront commuter town”, the area has a large African-American population with the Irish to the west, and the Orthodox Jewish and Haredi Jews to the east with a “relatively high crime rate”.

According to the New York Daily News, the “crime wave that continues to drown Far Rockaway” is due to a “perfect storm”:

The crime wave that continues to drown Far Rockaway in fear and frustration is the end result of the perfect storm of neglect. Resource starvation, governmental apathy and planned gentrification have further destabilized the tenuous existence of thousands of families on the peninsula. The fact, supported by statistics, is that violence has been out of control in Far Rockaway for several years. The rest of the city just didn’t hear or care about it.

What’s occurring in Far Rockaway is quite interesting, the area is built along the seashore, while on a “clear day” one can see Manhattan’s skyscrapers “in the distance”.

Once a popular seaside resort from the 1830’s until the end of WWII, Far Rockaway fell from seaside resort grace when the “working class” relocated after the “modernization” of beach houses in the 1960’s allowed year round living.

According to CityLimits.org, Rockaway Peninsula is defined by “contradictions”: to the west are homes in gated communities, to the east, public housing buildings and no grocery stores. The last five years have seen a resurrgence in housing developments with mixed results: new housing units which were built with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development have readily sold. while “private” housing developments, built in poorly zoned areas on lots too small, have become “homeless dumping grounds” by the city of New York. When developers “overbuilt” in areas with “fragile” markets and little zoning, the units wouldn’t sell. Developers then made a deal with the city to house the homeless.

“Some of these developers-turned-landlords have neglected basic maintenance responsibilities. Concentrations of absentee landlords plus high-needs people with minimal access to basic services and amenities means entire neighborhoods have been left neglected. “They said the Rockaways would be the new Hamptons,” said Anthony Green, a lifelong Far Rockaway resident in his mid-40s. “This isn’t the new Hamptons. More like the new ghetto.”

Which may explain why Toback and Sanders have to file a lawsuit against the Platinum Club over its “tittilating” sign. The area has little or no zoning: fairly new developments are already falling apart, while the city of New York is busy “relocating” the former homeless into the housing developments that haven’t sold. There aren’t any jobs, unless one is an exotic dancer, for those housed by the city, nor grocery stores, in the area. The Orthodox Jewish community of West Lawrence, a middle-class, suburban-style neighborhood with strong family and religious ties, is part of the “contradiction” of Far Rockaway. The sign is not only offensive but a reminder of how close another “world” exists, one of street gangs and the homeless being shuttled into the “new” developments by the city of New York. What once was America’s most famous beach resort is now a mixture of innercity blight and bustling communities such as West Lawrence.

By LBG

Image – Platinum Club sign